LEES: Fair and balanced? Baloney

I sat down to watch the three Sunday interview shows that are all on at the same time – 10:30 a.m. on CBS (“Face the Nation”), NBC (“Meet the Press”), and ABC (“This Week”). I was hoping, for once, there will be some sort of balance between liberal and conservative guests. I should know better by now. Big corporations control these shows, so don’t count on an equal balance between the right and the left.

Now, I know that we always hear right-wingers complaining that the media has a liberal bias. Well, the only network shows that I see with a liberal slant are on MSNBC. Everybody knows that it is a network for liberals, so don’t watch it if you don’t want to.

Fox News is different — they advertise that they are “fair and balanced”. What a load of, shall we say, “baloney” – this is a family newspaper, after all. The number of people who can’t see through Rupert Murdoch’s and Roger Ailes’ phony attempt to pretend this network is fair and balanced is truly appalling. That network is about conning the average American into believing the right-wing agenda is about helping them, when the real agenda is the hidden one (to help the Koch brothers and their conservative billionaire ilk get even wealthier).

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I have been watching “Meet the Press” since I was a little kid. Lawrence Spivak must have been the moderator for more than 30 years. Presently, David Gregory moderates, and I lost my confidence in him when he and Karl Rove did a little song and dance routine together at the White House Press Corp roast during the George W. Bush administration. George Stephanopoulos of ABC used to have my respect when he worked for the Clinton administration. I lost confidence in him when he asked Obama dopey questions about hanging around with terrorists in the debate with John McCain that was held at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia during the 2008 Presidential election campaign.

Bob Schieffer of CBS still has my respect, although I didn’t agree with the way he poohed-poohed people who still think the JFK assassination was a conspiracy during a broadcast around the time of 50th anniversary of the assassination.

Well, anyway, I settle in my LA-Z Boy chair to get some ideas to maybe use in this commentary (although frankly Bill Maher’s Real Time show on HBO and Paul Krugman’s blog are usually much better sources of information) and whom do I get to watch - Dick Cheney, aka “the Prince of Darkness,” who lied us into the Iraq war. Of all people to lecture us about telling Putin not to take over other places, Dick (Why don’t we take over Iraq’s oil?) Cheney might be the most numbskull choice you could make. Then we got, GOP VP candidate Paul (Why don’t we make up a bogus budget that really helps the super-rich and try to con everybody into thinking it helps regular Americans?) Ryan. Then we got GOP’ers Rep. Peter King and Rep. Mike Rogers. For a little variety we got Sen. Ted (Joe McCarthy, Jr.) Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Rand (Why don’t we go back to the gold standard?) Paul (R- Kentucky).

To balance off this 100% GOP conservative group, we were next presented with James (Why don’t we steal the 2000 election for George W. Bush?) Baker, formerly of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

What’s wrong with this picture? How many African-Americans are on that list - zero. How many women are on that list –zero? How many Democrats are on that list – zero? How many liberals are on that list –zero? To be fair and balanced I will mention that CBS, to its credit, did have Charlie Rose, sitting in for Bob Schieffer, interview one former member of the Obama administration for about 5 minutes. So let’s see – that’s 8 main GOP guests and one Democrat. Call me crazy, but that is not fair. How can we have a rational discussion when one side gets an 8 to 1 ratio in its favor? I know CPAC had it’s convention last week, but cut me a break. This just isn’t fair.

On their discussion panels, liberals do appear. ABC has been the best about this, having Bob Reich, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Donna Brazile, and even, bless them, Paul Krugman, on from time to time. NBC sometimes has historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on, but even these panels have a conservative majority, most of the time. ABC treats conservative George Will as if he is god, when he is on its panel. As far as I’m concerned, George Will’s expertise begins and ends with his knowledge of baseball.